Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Looking at the Nebres card you wouldn’t think it was a massive undertaking, You wouldn't think it took a week of planning and over a month to complete. So many people worked on this one card 4 Kids Wasn't able to list any of the artists on the actual card. The only credit this card has is “ By ED’s Friends”.Now you think to you're self why would so much effort be put in to one card. Lets go back to September 2007. At the time TMNT Back to the Sewers was in the beginnings of development And Most of the art staff was working on Chaotic cards. Wile on the job Our good friend and colleague Edwin Nebres Had a stroke. It was a huge shock to the whole team. You would never think that something like that would happen, especially to some one you know. The following week Jason Narvaez and Sam Murakami Called a meeting to come up with a Chaotic card Idea to do in honor of our friend.The plan was to present the final card to him when he was feeling more up to having visitors at the hospital.The idea for the card was a big brawl that would include a drawing by each one of the art staff. I came up with the idea of it being set in the Underworld Colosseum. Sam and Jason came up with the idea of Nebres being an Overworlder, his character was made a boar creature based on the year he was born, Which was the year of the boar in the Chinese Zodiac. In fact all of the creatures seen in the Nebres card were supposed to be Chinese Zodiac animals. Each based on the years of the artists who drew them. but nobody really stuck to that. Probably the only creature that stuck to the original idea was the one I designed.

Here we have some concept drawings I did. unfortunately I don't have any of the other staff's concepts.This one is me fleshing out the Nebres character design. I had the idea of combining a lot of the things Ed liked. the version I created had a lot more Asian influences. he also had some aspects from Ed's World of Warcraft character, that he used to draw every so often. I also had an idea that he had 4 swards one for each mugic element, they were supposed to be forged from mugic crystals. So his fiscal attacks were elemental attacks. this idea was shot down cause it might break the card game. you will see in the final design Khary Randolph kept some aspects of the design I did.

Here is my first stab doing a design for the card. the note on this design was it looks "to poesy" it needed more action.

Here is my second try. The note for this was it didn't show the front of the character.

Here is a close to finished sketch done by Khary. He actual incorporated some ideas from my sketches.

here are the lists of artists along with the pieces they did. In order of how they appear on the card. One of the Ideas was that all the characters on this card would eventually become characters in the Chaotic game.

I put together the final composite of the Characters drawn by everyone. I also inked a couple of the images so that they match the the others. Kahry finalized the line art, placement and extended some of the characters.

When all the line work was ready I started painting. I first started with Nebres and the two foreground arms. Then I painted the background. After that I moved on to the background characters. I actually wound up fully painting each character. The final color for this piece took me over a week to do. I needed too stay on schedule with Color development on Back to the Sewers, so I pretty much worked on it were ever I could. stayed late, brought it home what ever it took. Once I completed the card it was put on to the final card lay out with flavor text by Sam Murakami.

"As the 3 Time reigning champion of the Perim Battle Royal, Nebres is one of the Few OverWorlders Who has earned the respect of all tribes even the UnderWorlders"

The ultimate tribute to an all around awesome dude. I'm pleased to say Ed really enjoyed all of our hard work and is doing well with his recovery. We all look forward to his return.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Happy Re Re Emergence day!! In honor of the recent release of gears of war 2, I made a Cubee Craft version of Marcus Fenix. The design is an adjusted version of the design I did for the Gears of War Munny I created a wile back for my cousin.

For this version I actually got to do the Lancer.

Well anyway Make sure to head to Cubeecraft To download the paper craft template and get out your scissors

l hope you guys enjoy.

The material presented here is my original creation, is not official and is not endorsed by Epic Games, Inc. Gears of War, Marcus Fenix and the Crimson Omen are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

If you have an interest in how The guys at Koji Pro did a lot of the awesome graphics in check out this really cool Making of article. There are some great under the hood shots on how Snake was created as well as the vehicles and machines. There also is some awesome concept art by Yoji Shinkawa. Damn I wish Konami would produce a book of all the concept art for this game.

That's Right, Emilio Lopez, creator of the Gears of war Munny, on G4, setting the gaming world a blaze with his brilliant playing of My Sims Kingdom.LOL. Anyway that's me on the right playing and to my left is my friend Aura. Thanks to my Bud Chris for letting us tag along. It was a really fun event. Happy 20th Nintendo Power!

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Here is the season 5 Ninja tribunal DVD cover. I figured I'd show you a little of the process that went in to this Piece. When I was asked to do this cover I wanted to make it different than the others seasons on DVD . I had been painting Chaotic cards and I wanted to try something similar. I wanted to keep the hard animation like shadows but still have it look painterly. To sell them on the idea I repainted the tattooed Leo model from season five and Did two thumbnails.The for this cover I wanted to keep the mystery of what the season was about, Not giving away to much. I figured the visual of four shredders looming over the turtles would make people who hadn't seen the episodes yet be like oh man there fighting Four shreddersthats going to be crazy . I actually second guessed my self when I did my first two thumbnails. I figured they wouldn't go for the four shredder idea. So this is what I came up with. It's the four Shishos out of their Shredder armor. I also included splinter in this cover. I felt he should be on the cover as well. The other thumbnail I came up with had the same composition but instead the Demon Shredder was looming over the turtles. I'm actually glad they didn't select them.The comment I got for this version is they felt it was a little to similar to the other DVDs. In a meeting after they rejected the first two ideas, I told them my first idea and they seemed to like it . I also worked an idea of the Shredder looming behind the DVDs. This is my Thumbnail after the meeting. They really liked this one but they weren't happy with the placement of Mikey's left leg.Here are some extra elements I created to populate the DVD. Just some cool action poses for Splinter and The Ancient one. I wanted these old guys to look awesome, asspecially Ancient one.

This is my final sketch. all the characters and elements are separated on to their own pieces of bristol paper. I figured if some element's didn't work for the 4 kids Graphics Department they could adjust it if need be. They could also uses the separated elements to populate the DVDs as well as the menus. I Inked all the images by hand with a brush. When I colored them I redesign all the colors of all the characters I used. I also repainted the tribunal hall to match the painterly style i was using for the turtles. So there you have it the final cover as it will appear on the DVD cover. There are some elements that were adjusted By the 4 Kids Graphics Department but it still essentially what I intended. All in all I made 12 separate illustrations for this project, all four turtles the four Shisho Shredders, Demon Shredder, Splinter, Ancient one and the Student Amulet. This project was a massive undertaking but well worth the effort. My younger self would be proud.If you want to find out more of what goes into making the show. I suggest you take a look at the Official TMNT the Animated Series blog Inside The Shells. There you will find a lot of the great production art for the lost season as well as wallpaper of the images I haven't shown here. Its updated every Thursday so check it out.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

This has been in the making for a long time. I actually did the first sketch in Open Caves in 06. I liked the Idea so much I did an alternate version with a more fleshed out character. If you look at the progress sketch you'll see the problem when you work on a small screen and are not able to see the full drawing. I since got a better screen since then, But For the final pass I dint want to do it all digital. I sketched and inked it with real media. The final line art is on a 11 by 14 piece of bristol.For the color I painted it in Painter an did some touch ups in Photoshop.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Here are some extra Characters Done to populate the TMNT FF Season 2 DVD back cover menus and disks. The line are was done by Adrian Barrios Colors by Me. Here's Little known Fact about the dark turtles. Peter Laird was responsible for the final skin color for the dark turtles. Originally they were meant to be the same colors as the Turtles they were cloned from. If you want to check out the Front of the DVD cover check here http://nexxorcist.deviantart.com/art/TMNT-FF-Season-2-DVD-Cover-75813142

Friday, January 18, 2008

Well Guys Chaotic is finally out in stores so I figured I'd upload some cards I worked as well as Some shots of the Chaotic ceOsk at Toys R Us in Manhattan. We did a lot of work on this card game and I hope every on at lest checks out the Awesome art work we all produced did For this.

A wide shot Of the Chaotic ceOsk.

For the artwork for standy was a 3 person colloberation.Adrian Barrios Did the original line work for Chaor , Khary Randolph did Maxxor and I digitally painted them.

Here is Iron Pillar which is on the cover of Underworld the starter deck hand book And my personal favorite The Doors To The Deep Mines. The original Line work was done by Keith Conroy

Next we have the Cordac Falls and Plunge Pool Line work also by Keith Conroy